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Italian Prime minister Mario Monti, left, and European Central bank President Mario Draghi meet as they attend the opening ceremony of the academic year of the Bocconi University in Milan, Italy, Thursday. New data shows that a slight majority of EU countries had smaller economies than a year earlier, Karlsson writes.

*=some would perhaps object to my inclusion of Britain in the mild contraction category since they had zero annual growth. But considring that this first of all means that per capita growth is negative and secondly that the third quarter number was artificially and temporarily boosted by the Olympic Games (numbers for September that has been released indicates indeed that growth turned negative again once the Olympics ended)